


To His Dog, Every Man is Napoleon

by livenudebigfoot



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Puppies, but really anything can be the prelude to will/chilton if you want it to be, this is the prelude to will/chilton if you want it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1577528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he gets to Will's house, the dogs won't leave him alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To His Dog, Every Man is Napoleon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vagabond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagabond/gifts).



He knows them by the clicking of their nails.

Chilton isn’t really a dog person. It’s hard to give that much of yourself to an animal when you work all day and you live alone. He wonders how it is that Will does it. Maybe Will doesn’t have to, because there are so many of them. There’s a whole wagging, yipping pack of them roaming the property, and Chilton wonders if maybe when you’ve got that many dogs all together in one place, they all look after each other and it evens out, somehow.

Still, it seems like a lot of shit to pick up. And Chilton’s always felt that he picks up far too much shit at his day job.

The dogs have been on him since he staggered up the drive and onto the porch, snuffling at his hands and the blood on his shoes like they’re the results of some magic trick.

(and for my next trick, i’m going to stand there helpless while my last chance at surviving the Chesapeake Ripper  _disappears_ )

At first, Chilton just stands in the middle of the dog whirlwind, flinching and raw and exposed like a bare nerve, until Will comes out onto the porch to collect him. Now he just tries to ignore them, won’t even look down as the big ones butt at the back of his knees and shove their cold noses into his palms and the small ones dart between his ankles, trying to trip him up. Chilton would kick them away if he wasn’t exhausted and frayed and terrified and dependent on Will Graham’s hospitality. 

He can’t get rid of them, so they follow him, scratching and whining at the gap beneath the bathroom door while he takes a numb and halting shower and tries not to notice what’s washing off him and into the drain. They’re at his heels when he comes out of the bathroom, lapping at drops of water on the back of his calves.

One even oozes through when he shuts the door to Will Graham’s bedroom and starts to change into the clothes he brought from home, the ones that don’t smell like iron or wet or that bleeding, earthy human scent that’s all through the clothes he drove here in, the ones that he’d burn if he wasn’t abandoning them.

He waits until he’s wrapped up and warm before his legs finally start to give out. Just a dull quake in his knees and he’s sinking down the wall - one long, slow scrape - and Chilton thinks he’ll just stay there a while, fold his legs tight to his chest and sit still.

The dog, a fluffy, sandy colored thing that comes up to his shoulder when he’s sitting like this on the floor, stands by with its head cocked to one side, with it’s eyes stupid and sympathetic.

"This isn’t helpful," Chilton says.

The dog shifts its stance with a click of nails, but goes right on staring.

"You don’t know what I’m going through," he mumbles into his knees, "and, frankly, your ignorance is pretty insulting."

The dog presses its nose against Chilton’s ear and snuffles.

"Ugh." He grabs the thing by the scruff of the neck, means to shove it away but instead his fingers get tangled up there and it’s warm and it’s soft and suddenly Chilton is hit with a bunch of thoughts all at once. The taste of the wine at his last oblivious dinner with Hannibal Lecter and puffiness of human intestines (his own or others) when they’re exposed and spilling and anxiety about who’s going to water his plants while he’s gone. His fingers tighten, relax, tighten again until it’s just the gentlest scrape of his nails and he can hear the dog’s tail thumping against hardwood.

Chilton’s not a dog person, but this dog rests its head on his shoulder and lets him hang onto it for a few minutes, and on one of his worst days, that’s worth something.


End file.
